


War Is Hell

by green_grrl



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode Tag, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-07
Updated: 2006-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-01 17:59:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4029361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/green_grrl/pseuds/green_grrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode tag for "The Devil You Know"—Jack carries his own Hell with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	War Is Hell

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to princessofgeeks for comments and brainofck for betaing.

Jack doesn't have it in him to fight his way to his feet. Let them see him lean. Let them see the irrepressible Jack O'Neill repressed -- grimy, staff-blasted, drained.

The wormhole blinks out behind them, repainting the gateroom from rippling blue to its customary sickly green-white. Jack hears the rattling clicks of a dozen safeties engaging as security stands down.

He bows his head and lets more of his weight fall onto the strong shoulder supporting him, waiting for a flurry of hands from the medical team to peel him away, float him onto the magic carpet ride to the infirmary. Let someone else answer his CO's questioning look.

"General Hammond, Jacob Carter and Martouf have been successfully returned to the Tok'ra." Ah yes, the calm and ever-professional tones of Teal'c. _Thanks, buddy._ "The moon Netu and Sokar's mothership have been destroyed. We believe Sokar and Apophis to have been killed in the explosion."

"Apophis!"

"Yes, sir." And there's Carter. Couldn't ask for a better 2IC. _Better than I deserve._ "Apparently Sokar revived Apophis in the sarcophagus..."

Jack lets the rest of the story fade into undifferentiated noise as he's laid on the gurney. Daniel's quiet report to Janet on his leg wound is another buzz in counterpoint, a tenor line over the alto and bass backdrop.

With any luck he'll pass out and won't be able to think. Or get drugged to the gills and won't be able to think. Or, hey, even if the pain from his raw leg is bad enough he won't be able to...

Anything to keep from remembering sitting on his ass and telling Carter, "Yeah. Okay. Go ahead." Go _talk_ to the goa'uld with a taste for leggy blondes, the snake who's fucked Jolinar before.

He doesn't want to remember Daniel... Jesus, his _civilian_ —he'd almost made him sit this one out. Why take an archeologist on a search-and-rescue behind enemy lines? But it was Daniel who took a full-strength punch from a freaking jaffa mountain to get their communicator back, and then literally dragged Jack's ass out of hell. Jack's sorry, shot up, useless old ass that did nothing but slow them down and jeopardize their escape.

Once the initial euphoria of getting free had worn off, it had been a _long_ ride back to Vorash.

It would be really nice to stop thinking soon. Please.

Jack wants nothing more than to crawl outside of his dirty, grubby, aching self and start fresh. Pragmatic to the end, he instead endures the purgatory of Janet's ever-present penlight and vitals-taking routine, gritting it out until she'll drug him into blessed unconsciousness.

.

The sharp prickle in his nose penetrates first. Infirmary, he realizes immediately. The smell always reminds him of cocaine, makes him want to pinch his nose and sniff, a reflex from decades-ago parties.

He's still thinking about blinking his eyes open when he hears, "Hey." The word slips in his ears and triggers an automatic warming, a feeling of _safe_ , _home_ , _complete_ , before he can remind himself that he's a worthless sack of incompetence who should be taken out and shot.

Jack pushes back the weight of Daniel's comfort with effort and locks himself behind a wall of isolation. What was that thing Superman had? Fortress of Solitude, that's it. He shivers inside himself. Too much like Antarctica, the North Pole, but it's not like Jack deserves a tropical paradise.

"I know you're awake, you know."

Jack cracks open one eye to deliver a hostile, "So."

"So, how are you? I was pretty worried about you."

And that's Daniel, trying to nose his way under Jack's defenses, like a puppy scrabbling under the fence, eager to leap on you and get his muddy pawprints all over your jeans. _Fence. Defense._ Jack plays with the words in his mind. Daniel and puppies. Good luck trying to keep out the earnestly enthusiastic.

Which is incredibly hypocritical on Daniel's part. No one puts up a wall faster than Doctor Jackson when it comes to hiding emotions. He uses better camouflage—empathetic interest in everyone around him, talking a mile a minute about everything but himself. No snappish curmudgeon reputation for him. Yet pulling actual _Daniel_ information out of Daniel is like safecracking.

Hypocrisy. Well. Jack doesn't think too closely about the fact that he _can_ break into that vault. That sometimes Daniel even unlocks it of his own accord for him. The _point_ is, Jack's still exhausted. A few hours of morphine-fueled REM doesn't make up for hours and hours of unrelieved burn pain, topped off by an adrenal-depleting flight from certain death. He's in no mood for Daniel to come along and poke around in his goddamn _feelings_.

"I'm supposed to be on my way to see the general, but I wanted to see how you were doing."

"So you've seen. Bye." No quarter. Jack is _good_ at the stonewall; he knows he is.

"Yeeeah. I've seen something's bothering you, and I don't think it's your burn."

Beneath the concern, that iron stubbornness has crept into Daniel's voice, and that makes it easier in a way. Sure, Jack is screwed, because Daniel won't let it go. Ever. But the obstinacy also gets Jack's back up and makes it easy to snap back.

"Ah, yeh're a regular MacKenzie, Dannyboy." With his best bad Irish accent to rub in the sarcasm.

Heh. Hit. He can see the ever so slight narrowing of Daniel's eyes, the tightness around his mouth. Yeah, Daniel knows Jack's pushing his buttons on purpose, but that doesn't stop them from being pushed.

"Um, sure. Of course I am. So, how do you _feel_ about being injured, Jack?"

Got him on the run now. Some pissy snarking, a nice big fight, and Daniel will be nicely distracted. Though now that he's halfway into it, Jack's not sure he has the energy for it. Tactic number two, however...

"For crying out loud, Daniel, how do you think I feel? My leg is on goddamn fire!" Oh, yeah. There goes Daniel, scrunching his eyebrows with concern. He can be the most difficult son of a bitch on the face of the Earth, but he's always susceptible to appeals to his better nature.

Janet is just hanging up the wall phone when Daniel hustles dutifully over to get him more pain meds, and they huddle together a moment. While Janet heads off to the locked cabinet, Daniel comes back over, concern warring with frustration at his thwarted efforts to dig deeply into the O'Neill psyche.

"So that was the general, looking for me. I have to go. Just... sleep tight, and I'll come see you later." He makes way for Janet.

And Jack can't help feeling a little disappointed. He's a shit, he knows he is. Daniel's the most stubborn man in the galaxy, and Jack wants him to fight him on this. Fight for him. Even though he knows Daniel has to go. Even though Jack set him up, had already planned to keep playing him so Daniel couldn't break through. He still wants him to try, and it hurts to have him leave.

Christ, why doesn't he just go ahead and stick his lower lip out and complete the portrait? _Jack O'Neill, two-year old._ Bastard. Head fuck. Fricking freaking fuck. Fricatives—the one linguistic term he's managed to retain from Daniel's lectures because it's so wonderfully alliterative. Almost onomatopoeic.

Janet's standing there with her empty syringe, looking at him strangely. He hopes he hasn't let any multisyllabic words slip out under the influence; he has a reputation to maintain. Under. Going under... now...

.

"So, Jack. I thought I'd come by and sit with you a while, if that's all right."

Ever the Southern gentleman, old George. And he is George at the moment, late at night, when it's only a graveyard shift of nurses.

Jack waves his hand in a "sit down, knock yourself out" gesture and winces when the motion makes him dizzy. He's still a little looped.

"Helluva mission," George starts, then winces. Those unintended puns are a killer.

Jack laughs humorlessly. "Oh yeah. That's _exactly_ what it was."

"How's the leg, son?"

"Oh, you know, cauterized by a staff blast, so nothing to worry about but searing pain and possibly a hideous burn scar." He's never quite gotten the knack of silent stoicism. Why swallow all that bitterness when you can spew it out, spread it around? Better out of him than in him, he always says.

Besides, not much rocks General George. "Are you all right? Do you need any pain medication?" Thank god for a CO who's used to his crap.

"No, I'm fine for now." SGC-version fine, meaning still completely strung out and drained, but not in _imminent_ danger of death.

They sit under the buzzing flicker of the single night shift fluorescent and Jack mentally pinpoints his morphine levels by the amount he does, or rather doesn't, drift.

After a while George says, "You did a good job out there Jack. Passed on the intel, rescued Jacob, and got your team out. It was a risky mission to begin with, and you pulled it off and saved the galaxy once again."

Jack purses his lips. Looks away. George waits him out, until Jack finally says, "You'll have to get the heroics part from the heroes." George just raises his eyebrows, so Jack clarifies, "Here's my mission report: Two of my team, myself and an ally tortured. One nearly raped. And I managed to get pointlessly shot and weigh everybody down for the rest of the mission." _Brilliant_ contribution from the team leader. He contemplates that they shoot horses with bum legs, and wonders whether warhorses count.

George sighs. The greenish light highlights the lines of his fatigue. "Look son, I _know_ how hard it is to see your people in harm's way, to not be able to protect them. Some missions go further south than can ever be imagined." It's not pity. It's not sympathy. George has _been_ there. He knows. "Fortunately in this case it didn't come to the worst."

"Yeah."

And, damn it, George gives him a satisfied nod at that—George knows him well enough to know that the fact that no one died or was reduced to a quivering wreck by unspeakable assault is enough to keep Jack from resigning on the spot.

He's still holding the option in reserve, though.

.

Jack stares at the infirmary ceiling and tries not to think about... anything. Some indeterminate time later, he realizes someone is in the doorway. Daniel.

"Oh, wow. Hey. I didn't think you'd be up."

"And what are _you_ doing up at this hour?"

"Oh, you know. It's that decision time—caffeine crash, or make a new pot?"

Jack gives in to the inevitable. "Take a load off."

Daniel looks wary as he edges into the seat. Probably waiting to see if he'll get the explosion of temper or the cutting sarcasm. He knows how frustrated Jack gets, injured. Daniel wields both tools himself—most often at Jack, since each knows the other can handle it—so Jack has no doubt he's braced.

In the surreal hours of the early morning, though, Jack is too wrung out by tidal pulls between pain and drugging to be interested in fighting. Daniel's company is, at the moment, a blessed relief from the dull slog of boredom pulling him down. "What's the gossip?"

"Oh, well," Daniel gives the bridge of his glasses a poke, "mostly everybody's talking about how SG-1 saved the galaxy again."

 _Crap._ Last thing he wanted to talk about. And of course Daniel doesn't miss Jack's flash of disgust.

"What? We did, really. Shouldn't get old," he tries to tease.

And it's apathy or fatigue or just the way Daniel's presence lets him talk about things he doesn't tell anybody else, but the words start spilling.

"No, you did. Carter did. Teal'c did. Even Jacob, practically dead, and Marty and... Waldo did. Me? I was a liability. Gimped. Passed out from pain half the time. When I wasn't pimping Carter out."

"Jesus, Jack, is _that_ what's been eating you?" At least he's not all sweet sympathy. Jack hates that crap. One thing about Daniel, he always gives it to him straight. "Don't you patronize Sam! Her father was _dying_ and she was going to do whatever it took to get him the hell out of... Hell." Daniel barely stutters in his tirade. "And don't you tell me that if it was the only chance to get us out of there you wouldn't have given it up for Byanar in a heartbeat. I know if that bastard had a thing for guys in glasses, I would have. Anything for the team—that's what we do. Sam's military, Jack; don't you dare tell her there's _anything_ she can't contribute to rescue her team."

Jack closes his eyes, trying to keep the bile down as images of Byanar having a perverted field day with both Carter and Daniel dance through his brain.

Daniel winds it down a notch. "Besides, if you hadn't let her go, she probably would have knocked you out and gone anyway."

Jack remembers her desperation at Jacob's condition, and has to admit Daniel's probably right. Daniel's tone is still firm, though Jack knows it's the version of "caring and concerned" Daniel knows will work on him. "None of us liked it. It would have been horrific. But it was her choice. Her father's been able to deal with it, and so has her boyfriend—or whatever he is. So the question is, can you give her the respect due an airman who was in the position to make a sacrifice for the team, or are you going to treat her like a fragile flower who's too precious for the horrors of war?"

Damn it, a war with words with Daniel is as hopeless as a land war in Asia. Jack fights it to the last, spits out, "You don't think you're taking it a little lightly?"

"I've already been raped by a goa'uld in the line of duty," Daniel grits back. And Jack feels the flare of nausea mixed with white-hot rage again, the overwhelming urge to resurrect Hathor to be able to kill her all over again, as slowly and painfully as possible. Daniel continues more calmly, "Believe me, I, of all people, do not want Sam to be raped. I don't want Teal'c to be beaten. I don't want you to be tortured. I don't even want any of those things to happen to me. But as long as we're a frontline team, they _could_ happen, and you _have_ to let us do our jobs."

Jack tacitly concedes the argument. Daniel's right; he has no business being Carter's CO if he won't let her be a professional. He's not entirely sure he should be a CO anyway. "Yeah, well, what about when I'm not doing _my_ job? What about when I manage to get shot for nothing and turned into dead weight for the rest of the mission?"

"Injuries happen, the team covers. That's what we do. God, like you don't carry me through the gate every other mission."

"M'job," Jack mutters. "My job," he repeats more clearly.

"No, Jack, your job is to be our leader, and you are." Daniel is winding up for another spiel, only just managing to not get up and gesture and pace. "You turned us into the team who could break out of the inescapable prison. Look... look at Teal'c. You know how the jaffa are—ready to sacrifice themselves or their men at a moment's notice for the mission. The Tok'ra, too. But Teal'c punched Aldwin and stashed him in the cargo hold so he could get us out. He learned that—the value of an individual's life—from you.

"Sam, she was a scientist and a pilot. You've turned her into a first class field operator. You even took an absent-minded academic and drummed enough defense training into me for me to be able to hold my own. When I went after the comm device, you were there," Daniel taps his temple. "I just thought, 'What would Jack do?'"

"And you came up with 'punch a jaffa in the gut'?"

"It worked." Daniel shrugs. "Hey, back in the old days, I probably would have just jumped for it and gotten myself killed."

Jack grimaces. It's true. "Of course you probably would have gotten popped into a sarcophagus and abracadabra." He tosses his fingers up like resurrection is as easy as throwing confetti. He doesn't like thinking about Daniel's extraordinary good luck in the whole "coming back to life" area. Everyone's luck runs out sometime, and he only hopes that when Daniel's does, he will already be long gone and won't have to see it.

"Or not." Daniel's tight-lipped. It's not his favorite topic either. "Anyway, what I'm saying is, you've _made_ this team. Hell, you even influenced the Tok'ra. Jacob and Martouf were ready to give up when they heard the moon was going to blow. You were practically dead on your feet, but you insisted we keep trying to escape. _That's_ leadership, Jack. That's making sure you get your team out."

"Not that lugging around six feet two of deadweight made it easy."

"Cut the crap, Jack!" Daniel's definitely getting pissy. "You've taught us never to leave a man behind, and we won't. I won't. Even if it's you." And Jack can't argue with that. The stubborn bastard is actually swaying the jury of one.

Almost too quiet too hear, Daniel adds, "Especially if it's you."

And this, this Jack can't handle, not the hints that his deepest secret might not be his alone. Not when Daniel has fought back the layers of guilt and shame and futility just enough that he's come back to life a little. He wants to bury himself again. If not under depression, then repression or denial or _something_. But there's no _something_ helpfully showing up and preventing him from catching that tiny hint of smile, the subtle press of lip into cheek that only happens for him.

He gives up on the idea of burying himself. Daniel's a freaking archeologist.

Daniel pulls his chair closer and covers Jack's hand with one of his. A bit of Daniel's hair is spiking out awkwardly over his ear, a casualty of tired rubbing as the caffeine wore thin. Jack feels the twinge behind his ribs, too high up and far to the left to pass off as indigestion. And that's worse than the reflexive swelling in his cock that happens when they pass that invisible barrier of separateness and are "in each other's space"—one of those ridiculous hippie phrases that nevertheless happens to be quantifiable, measurable, as he feels the heavy surge between his legs right on cue.

That familiar ache he can ignore. Lots of practice, since his divorce. Pain from losing his son, losing his wife, had neutered him for a long time. When his libido finally woke up and took a look around, he'd realized that over a decade of marriage had spoiled him. Just the thought of a cheap fling makes his stomach churn. _Nope. Colonel O'Neill's gotta shoot for the moon. Nothing but the gold standard, the best. Outta everyone's league._

No, the stirring below the waist can be ignored out of habit. He's over 40. He has a right hand. Lust isn't the all-consuming problem it was in his youth. The current problem is the too-heavy tattoo in his chest, the way Daniel is already _inside_ his emotional barriers, leaving him rawly vulnerable. Jack wants to curl into a ball, preferably with an armored back he can turn to Daniel, like the pillbugs he used to poke in the garden as a boy. Whether it's the clumsy interference of IVs and bandages, or some shred of pride, he refrains. Let his heart shred; at least the object of his inner turmoil is worthy. Worthy of so much more than a beat-up, stained flyboy.

Daniel apparently reads that across his face like a billboard, from the way his face pinches up with annoyance. Jack wonders what happened to his vaunted inscrutability. Distressingly scrutable, that's him anymore. With Daniel anyway.

"Stop it," Daniel snaps. His face twists in a moment of indecision over his next words, then he adds more quietly, but with a fierce intensity, "I _can't_ lose you."

Jack's "I can't lose _you_ " gets caught in his throat. But Daniel is watching his eyes closely, and Jack sees something give in his gaze and knows he heard it anyway. Daniel takes Jack's hand between both of his and rubs lightly.

"Tomorrow I'll see how soon Janet will let you go if I take you home and take care of you."

"Great, so you'll have to haul me around some more." He knows better than to protest the inevitable; the grumping now is pro forma.

Daniel spares another of those tiny, private smiles. "You ain't heavy." The mesmerizing sweep of Daniel's thumb over his knuckles promises that he's more than his brother. 


End file.
